After playing a game of tennis in a corset and heavy skirts, who wouldn’t want to eat cake?
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Author: Little Dorrit
Will Rogers’ Chili and Beans
Will Rogers, the “cowboy philosopher,” was a man of many talents: actor, cowboy, newspaper columnist, and humorist. After settling his family on a ranch in California, he also became a beloved local figure in Beverly Hills; in 1926, he was briefly declared the honorary mayor. Naturally, when the Beverly Hills Woman’s Club produced a community cookbook, they asked him to contribute an introduction. He did – along with two recipes of his own.
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Lamington Cake
Lamington cakes, an Australian favorite, are named after either Lord Lamington, governor of Queensland from 1896 to 1901, or his wife, Lady Lamington. Lamingtons are beloved enough that they are celebrated by an Australian Lamington Appreciation Society and have an official holiday, National Lamington Day, on July 21st.
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Cider Punch
This punch recipe comes from Henrietta Nesbitt’s The Presidential Cookbook: Feeding the Roosevelts and Their Guests. Mrs. Nesbitt served as Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt’s housekeeper in the White House for 13 years. She writes in her chapter on teas and punches that two hundred guests would be considered a small tea party for Eleanor Roosevelt – many White House teas would include over a thousand guests. “When the guest list reaches the thousand mark…the only solution is fruit punch, and plenty of it.”
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Black Coffee Cake
This 1930’s coffee cake combines all the things I’ve loved about the other coffee cakes I’ve tried: it’s made with coffee and it’s good to eat with coffee!
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Coffee Cakes
After having such success making a 1940s orange coffee cake last week, I thought I’d try my hand at making coffee cakes from the 1902 Mrs. Rorer’s New Cook Book. Unfortunately, this attempt was not successful…whether it was the fault of an over-complicated recipe, using too many substitutions, or just my general ineptitude, I’m not sure. Read on to find out how NOT to make coffee cakes.
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Orange Coffee Cake
This coffee cake recipe comes from Sunkist Orange Recipes for Year-Round Freshness, a 1940 advertising pamphlet for Sunkist oranges. Every single recipe in the booklet contains oranges in some shape or form – and every page contains eye-popping bright orange illustrations.
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Coffee Cake
The term “coffee cake” started appearing in print during the 19th century, but it didn’t always refer to the type of coffee cake we would recognize today. Early coffee cake recipes could be for any type of bread, pastry, or cake that could be consumed with coffee…or, like in this recipe from 1877, they might actually be made with coffee.
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Custard
Thomas Dawson’s 16th century recipe for custard is, like many recipes of the time, a little short on details.
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Sauce Vert
This medieval recipe for a green sauce comes from Ashmole manuscript 1439, written around the year 1430.
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